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To expand on Rob's post -- the normal advice is to set the radar such that you are just seeing ground returns on the top of the ND. This means that the tilt angle will depend on both the aircraft's altitude (because the distance to the horizon increases as altitude increases) and the ND range setting (bearing in mind that beyond the horizon -- which will be c. 220NM away at FL350 -- you will not get any ground returns). Therefore, with the ND range set to, say, 160NM you will need much less tilt than if you set the ND range to 40NM.

This is a bit difficult in the PMDG 777 as, as I understand it, ground returns are not (yet?) modelled -- therefore Rob's rule of thumb is a good one.

Bear in mind that not every red return is a CB. Part of the art of using the radar is interpreting the dangerous CBs from the harmless heavy rain showers. Manipulating the tilt and gain controls can be very useful in this regard: if you're still seeing red fairly high up in to the cloud, it's probably nasty. If, on the other hand, a red return 160NM out disappears when you tilt the radar up slightly -- this is almost certainly a much more benign system.

Likewise the gain (which should under normal circumstances be left in AUTO/CAL) may be used to identify the strongest cells (useful if you are in the tropics, perhaps, where you are likely to see an awful lot of red). Reducing the gain slowly will result in the returns slowly fading from red to yellow to green and eventually all the way to black: the areas which stay red the longest are the strongest cells. Don't forget to set the gain back to AUTO/CAL immediately afterwards, though!

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